This first person shooter game has been building some heavy
hype recently. Mostly because the publisher, Eidos, and
developer, Free Radical, have been claiming that former Rare
employees who worked on the award winning First Person Shooter,
Goldeneye 007, are now working on this game. I saw other
publications gave this game high scores as well, like Next
Generation magazine giving it a perfect 5 stars. So will this
game live up to all the hype surrounding it? Lets get onto
the review and find out.

The Story

Well, youre stuck traveling in time, trying to kills
some bad guy so you dont alter the history of the events
over time, hence the games name Timesplitters, and save the
world from destruction. Simple story, nothing special, but then
again most first person shooters have weak storylines, with
the only exception off the top of my head being Goldeneye 007.

Graphics

Well, I have to admit, this game has some pretty great
visuals. The arenas and environments look great, and super
realistic. The multi player arenas look just as better with
several different textures to choose from like virtual (plain
white), or even gothic, where your level looks like a big church.
Just about everything is detailed down to every notch, and the
tiniest details are easily noticed, like wacky 70's costumes of
most of the characters. I was really expecting some slowdown when
playing the game in multi player mode with 2 players and 10
bots(computer players), like the kind I was use to
with 2 players and 8 simulants in Perfect Dark multi player, but
surprisingly there was no slowdown at all, even with 4 players
and 10 bots, there was no slowdown visible at all. The
games level editor is nicely laid out in a green grid,
pseudo, 3D type format. And its really easy to use,
although tricky at first, but youll easily get use to
managing it after an hour or so. Each gun has its own
distinctive design, which is neat, but some look like altered
ripoffs off other games, for example the games
mini-gun looks like Goldeneyes Grenade
Launcher.

Of course, with no slowdown at all, there had to be some
sacrifices to make the game run at a smooth rate, once in multi
player with loads of bots, youll notice right off the bat
that the levels look really jaggy and it does get distracting at
times. Also all names of the guns and player descriptions are
kept to a bare minimum during game play. Also, after staring at
the games character select screen for over an hour,
youll notice that just about all of the games
characters are horribly thin for some odd reason. Also the bigger
created levels you use for multi player, the longer it
takes to load, for example, a level my friend made that just
about took up all the allowable space in the level editor, took
about a whole minute and a half to load. Another odd thing in the
game is that there is no opening movie describing the games
story that is usually found in most other first person
shooters. Oh, and wheres the gore? I didnt even
see a tiny drop or stain of blood in the game, hence the Teen
rating. And the only other down point about the visuals is that
the games menus arent as easy to navigate and use
like Perfect Dark.

Sound

Well, the game has a lot of neat background tunes during game
play. Most of them sound like gloomy, mystic tunes youd
hear off some Cheap, B-Rated horror movie. But I guess they fit
the games theme well, and you usually never hear it during
the game play over all the gunfire and everything. The sound
effects are appropriate, each gun has its own separate sound
effect. All the explosions and gunfire sounds like they usually
do, and there really is nothing much to complain about in the
sound department.

Game play

Well, I guess Free Radical wanted to start its own style of
controlling for first person shooters like others did, (Like the
infamous Turok-Style controls that Turok innovated on
the N64 by moving with the C buttons, and the
Goldeneye-style innovated by Goldeneye by moving with
the control stick. But did Eidos include these 2 famous control
styles as the games default? Nope. Instead they opted
to use one of the PS2's analog sticks to move, and the other to
look, with one of the shoulder buttons used to fire and aim.
Resulting in a very confusing, tricky experience which would seem
impossible to adapt to. Heck, the game also had a couple other
different control schemes to pick from, and
Goldeneyes wasnt even in there. And the games
customizable control screen was so hard to understand, that it
took me a whole half hour to get the scheme down for me.

The one player mode plays out a lot like the other recent
first person shooters, where you complete certain objective
in order to complete the level, but I found most of these levels
rather simple to complete, and not that much of a challenge, and
nowhere as much fun as I had playing Perfect Darks solo
missions. The multi player mode is what I had the most fun
playing, choose from a variety of characters, and play in several
different game modes against up to 4 human players with up to ten
computer controlled, bots. The action, is fast, fun, and furious,
and even up to par on the fun PC multi player death matches of
Quake 3, Delta Force, and Unreal in my opinion. The game runs
really fast, no matter how many guys are playing, and youll
be blowing up stuff in a matter of minutes. Heck, I played a 100
team score limit game against 4 teams of bots, and me and my
friend won the match in 11 minutes! The multi player saves all
your stats (and control schemes too, thankfully). And it borrows
a page out of Rares book by including all the awards after
the game. A couple of different things from the multi player
experience from Rares games are that youll notice
that the heads actually fly off your opponents when you shoot
them in the head. Also the computer players tend to have a lot
more life also. Timesplitters also has a new
give-take point tracking feature, where you gain a
point for every kill, and lose one, every time you die. Making
death matches last more longer than you can imagine if you
dont set a time limit. Unfortunately, you cant create
characters, or even name characters or players for that matter.

Replay Value

The games level editor is a big plus in the game. And
just like Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 Level Editor, its a
free course in game designing. Youll just be spending hours
making a level unto it pleases you. But the bigger you make the
level, the more memory it takes, (like say, near a whole meg on
your memory card if you max out the space available in the level
editor. The multi player can be compatible with up to 4 players,
and it is a blast to play, just a tad notch more fun than Perfect
Dark because of the fast frame rate. But if youre looking
for a strong single player game, you should probably not even
look into this title for the matter.

In Brief

+: Super fast frame rate that remains constant during the most
unimaginable moments, great multi player action, level editor is
innovative and by far the best Ive seen!

-: Awfully jaggy in multi player, no gore, the worst default
control scheme I ever witnessed, cant edit player or team
names, Weak Single Player

The Final Ratings Rundown

Graphics: 7.2
Sound: 7.4
Game play: 7.0
Replay Value: 7.7

Overall: 7.3

Rounded to fit GameFAQs Score: 7

Comments

Timesplitters has both major ups and downs going for it,
all mentioned in the In Brief section of this review. But I think
the minuses outweigh the pluses here barely. If you just love
multi player madness or just got to have a first person shooter
on the PS2(avoid the non-online Unreal PS2 version), then you
should buy this game. Otherwise, stick with Perfect Dark and
Goldeneye 007 for your home console first person shooters, or at
least just give this title a rent. Id wait for the expected
sequel though, we all know how Eidos is with sequels(Like about 3
Tomb Raider games a year), which I think will be really polished
off.